Sports casting on TV has become the most popular program. Generally, a TV audience wholly watches a sports program from a spectator's point of view. Therefore it is difficult for them to directly sense the excitement or enjoyment that the athlete they are watching is feeling. Broadcasting what the athlete is sensing, thinking or feeling while s/he is in the heat of competition to the audience directly, can allow the audience to experience the athlete vicariously with the use of a VR system. We call such a new broadcasting system a realistic sports casting (RSC). We have been focusing on marathons for our pilot RSC system and, in this paper, we introduce a method of broadcasting information on how a professional athlete is feeling tired while running. By using our athletic ability regulating method by the pulse rate, a system can adjust the running speed of the viewer, and consequently, allow the viewer to share a feeling of fatigue with the athlete.

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For development of evacuees' decision and action model under emergency situation such as fire or sinking in a ship, simulator experiment studies have been carried out by using the simulator based on virtual reality technology. In order to present subjects with realistic emergency circumstances, it is important to generate congestion by crowds of evacuees. Furthermore to develop a quantitative decision model it would be important to control characteristics of congestion quantitatively at simulator experiments. In this paper, the method by which density and walking speed of evacuees are controlled quantitatively is explained and the statistical characteristics of the congestion generated by this method are examined.

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This paper proposes an evaluation method for a virtual sporting environment, called the virtaul marathon system. The virtual marathon system is an application of our newly developed locomotion device. An aim of the virtual marathon system is to achieve the novel communication environment that can tranfer the bodily sensations of an athlete in the competition to the users. To evaluate the virtual marathon system, we focus on the versatile subjective impressions in the marathon race. We describe the design methodology for the evaluation indices, using such impressions. And we discuss the validity of our proposed indices from the experimental result of the assessment.

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This paper describes a rehabilitation system using network-connected locomotion interfaces. We developed two footpad type locomotion interfaces that enable the users to feel the sense of walking on uneven virtual terrain and connected them via network. Using this system, the patient can feel the motion of walking from the movements of the footpads under his/her feet. Also the therapist can teach the motion of walking to the patient directly by only walking on the interface, and adjust his/her walking motion according to the patient condition. We implemented a master-slave environment and evaluated the system. We also discussed other types of rehabilitation environment using our system.

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This paper describes a multi-scale modeling method that can display the wide VR space with enhancing the reality. We divide the object existing space into cubes hierarchically, and control the fineness of object shape by the parameter that indicates the complexity value of object shape. Utilizing this parameter, the object shape is simplified smoothly relative to the viewing distance. Moreover, the high-quality and high-reality VR space can be presented because the expression of the detailed shape of corresponding with the viewing distance can be realized. We showed the validity of the multi-scale modeling method in the high-reality wide VR space that has huge quantities of data.

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In this study, keeping the medical applications in mind, the interface that gets the accurate visual registration is developed in order to achieve the effective and suitable micro operation using master-slave system. In this paper, a novel teleoperation based on a feature-based visual servo is proposed as one of superior methods to realize the visual registration. Especially, the feature-based scheme uses an object image feature directly without computing the object 3D information. Furthermore, H_∞ feedback controller is designed for the linearized system. And, the adaptive visual servo consisting of on-line estimator of image Jacobian is designed. Human can recognize the master-slave manipulators as a tool and operate it intuitively. The validity of proposed method is confirmed by the experiments of teleoperation.

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Virtual cities are emerging into the cyber space and other virtual environments such as web sites and computer games. Virtual cities are usually made from camera images or 3D data of real cities; however, it may be interesting to create completely new type of cities in the computer. We started a virtual-city project with road networks generated by using L-system. In this paper, we propose a method to generate road networks taking geographical environments into account as a factor that affects the geometrical and topological shape of road networks. The method makes use of an L-system modified so that each production rule may be applied referring to the geographical environments and depending its probability. We actually produced new road networks to compare with real ones.

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This paper proposes a method of consolidated manipulation of virtual and real objects using a "magnetic metaphor". The method reduces the difference of behavior between the virtual and real objects. Therefore, it enables a user to manipulate virtual and real objects in the similar manner by expecting the same response and behavior according to the same physical laws. Experimental results show that the proposed method improves the task performance of the manipulation of virtual and real objects.

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This paper presents a Spatial Sketch System that provides a sketch-like modeling interface, and realizes 3D drawings for human-oriented industrial design, such as car styling. The designer can draw lines and surfaces directly and freely in the canvas of 3D space by operating a pen-type pointing device while viewing a stereoscopic display. The process of modeling consists of two parts; In the Rough Sketch stage, the user works his/her ideas out rapidly by drawing free-formed curves and surfaces. Then, in the Refinement stage, precise tracing of the sketched surfaces completes the refined NURBS model. Additionally, implemented intuitive command selection assists creative work. For example, a curve is removed when the designer shakes it quickly.

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This paper proposes a ciliary device using soft high polymer gel actuators to express fine touch as a surface of cloth. This new device is designed with a number of cilia consisting of ICPF actuators, where a cilimn is 2 mm wide and 5 mm long. The device can generate various distributed stimuli to human sense receptors. It was experimentally confirmed that combinations of vibratory stimuli of high frequency and low frequency produced complex tactile feels. Comparison of the artificial tactile feels and cloth material samples demonstrated that this device developed could display subtle distinction in the touch of cloth, especially like a towel and a denim.

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